Dota 2 New Blood

Welcome to the Gaming World!

Video games have been gaining a huge popularity in the last five or six years. However, video games have been around for a long time but with the development of new software solutions, video games have become much better than before which caused people to take on video games as a type of entertainment. The use of video games has created a subculture that revolves around the video games and professional eSports competitions.

The Birth of eSports

Today, eSports industry is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and it has been present in almost all parts of the world. However, the beginnings of this industry were not that great. As it is the case with every other sports, eSports has gone through some rough time and it took some time before this industry developed a widespread audience. The first video game competition that was recorded happened on October 19th, 1972 at Stanford University. Through the next couple of decades, eSports developed slowly and during those years, some website would keep the records of the players and their achievements in different competitions. However, with the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, eSports also started to gain bigger popularity and with the development of video gaming consoles such as Nintendo, eSports was on the right path of becoming a very popular part of video gaming industry. During the 2000s, eSports and especially eSports competitions in Starcraft and Warcraft III have been extremely popular and the level of popularity in that time is only second to the current popularity of eSports. Today, games such as League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Call of Duty, and other are dominating eSports as well as Internet streaming services such as Twitch, YouTube, Azubu.tv, Hitbox, and others. These streaming platforms have also started to stream eSports tournaments and the number of people watching those tournaments has surpassed the number of people watching some basketball or NFL games in the entire country. Today, eSports has become so popular that some of the world’s biggest sports teams and athletes have established their own teams in order to compete as this industry has been known to bring huge income to all involved. Besides that, more and more people are demanding that eSports becomes officially recognized sports and it seems that might be happening very soon. The organizers of Asian Games 2022 have announced that eSports will be included in the programs of the games which will be the first time ever that some sports association has recognized eSports as a sport.

History of Video Games

First video games appeared in the 1970s and the first commercial video game was Computer Space that was developed and released by Nutting Associates in 1971. Soon after that, in 1972, Magnavox developed the first home video game system that provided more people with the opportunity to play video games. Looking from this time point, the first video gaming system featured a very simple graphics which changed a lot in the next forty years. Video games continued to develop in the next ten to fifteen years and in 1985 Nintendo released Nintendo Entertainment System and since then video gaming industry was not the same. Nintendo brought many changed to video gaming systems and it used pad controller instead of the joystick which was seen as a revolutionary move at that time. At around that time, the first hugely commercially successful video game, Legend of Zelda, was being developed. In the upcoming decades, video games have been transformed in many different ways. The graphics and software solutions used in the development of modern video games could not even be imagined back in the 1980s when video games started to gain wider popularity. Today, millions of people, mostly young people, from all over the world are involved in video gaming and the entire industry has been estimated to worth several billion dollars.

Internet Live Streams

With the development of the Internet and the streaming services, video games have entered a completely new realm. Internet Live Streams of video games has become a very profitable business for gamers because companies that developed video games are paying those games to pay their games in order to attract new people. Gamers have become a very effective advertising campaign for the promotion of video games as huge number of young people is following those gamers.

Internet streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube have contributed a lot to the fact that video games have become so popular in the last five or six years. These online live streams enable the audience to follow the gamer live while he or she is playing through a game and in that way they can see what the game has to offer. The phenomenon of YouTubers has been expanding very quickly and some of the first YouTubers in the world have started their career by streaming how they play certain video games.

In the last four or five years, eSports has been dominating the world of video game. Internet live streams of playing video games have become a very effective method of finding new, young, and talented players that would join certain professional eSports team. Besides that, the majority of big eSports organization have signed contracts with video games players who would stream their game on the organization's official channel because they know that the incomes of those streams are very big.

Despite the profit, the majority of eSports organization still uses those streaming services in order to find the potential players for their team as there are a lot of amazing players who have been streaming their videos of playing video games.

eSports Betting

Just like it was the case with traditional sports, as soon as eSports became widely popular, bookmakers all over the world started including eSports in their betting offers. Today, almost all bookmakers in the world have included eSports in their offers and those who are ready to bet some of their money on the eSports have the opportunity to do that on different types of offers. eSports betting is no different than betting on traditional sports. However, unlike with traditional sports, those who have not been following eSports competition will not have much success with betting. Betting successfully on eSports demands the attention and devotion to these competitions in order to know who might be the winner of the match or who might win the next game or a round.

eSports Associations

Just like it is the case with traditional sports, once eSports reached a certain level of popularity it was required to institutionalize these competitions and provide an institution that would be in charge of different issues.

Just like British eSports Association, World eSports Association or WESA has been formed in 2016 and some of the world's biggest eSports organizations are members of this association. However, of the founders of this association such as FaZe Clan has stepped out because they were afraid that this association will limit the number of tournaments in which a certain team can participate. The main goal of this association is to determine rules and regulations and to make them standardized in order for the entire industry to be able to apply them. WESA has caused a lot of controversies in a short period since it was established but it seems that WESA is currently the most powerful eSports association in the entire world.

One of the first eSports association that was established was International e-Sports Federation whose headquarters are in Seoul, South Korea. The main goal of this association is to work on eSports being legitimately recognized as a sport and to promote eSports industry not only in South Korea but also in the rest of the world. International e-Sports Federation has been established in 2008 and since then they have been working on increasing the number of member countries, training referees that would be working on different eSports events. Besides that, this association has also been working on creating regulations that would create an international standard for the entire eSports industry as well as on the organization of international eSports world championship.

British eSports Association has been established in 2016 by Chester King. Currently, this Association is Britain's national body for eSports and professional video gaming. This Association has been funding the grassroots eSports as well as providing funds. Besides that, this association has also been working on promoting eSports, establishing good practice in eSports industry, and providing advice for those who are about to venture into the eSports industry. Interestingly, the British eSports Association has managed to secure the government support in their actions which is also one of the steps towards eSports becoming officially recognized as a sport.

International eGames Committee

International eGames committee is an eSports association whose primary task is the organization of eGames, one of the biggest eSports events in the world. This Committee is completely independent association as it has nothing to do with the International Olympic Committee though it seems that the idea behind the establishing this organization was taken from IOC and the Olympic Games. The first eGames were held last year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the host of this year's eGames has not been revealed yet.